A Sliver of a Tale
by Delusional Fishies
Summary: You see them everywhere, all the time. They are on your lawn, mowing your grass. In your park, picking up trash. In your alleys, beating up gangs. They are your sewer system and your roads and your bridges. Welcome to Brockton Bay, the City of Slivers.
1. Dinah Sees a Sliver

1.1 Dinah Sees a Sliver

* * *

Middle School was so different from Elementary School. Her classmates' changed so drastically when she met them earlier that day, almost as if the summer added a layer of something indescribably of the adult mystique to them. Dinah missed the old days of Elementary School, when everyone would just say what they liked and what they wanted... none of this stuff, where they smiled and nodded only to do something different.

The rest of the sixth graders were in the recreation center by the library, which was half a block away from their school, playing some old game called 'Golden Eye' or something of that sort.

But not her.

Dinah trudged into her backyard, nibbling on the tail-end of a fruit roll-up, with her current woes-the problems of surviving Middle School-clear on the forefront of her mind. It wasn't hard to imagine punching the boys for staring strangely at the girls, teasing them for this or that awkward thing. They had done so this morning, to her classmate Alice. Alice was a good girl, who always helped everyone as much as she could and even more, but all the boys were just _loudly _talking about how they could see hair growing under her arms and how icky that was. And it wasn't just the boys. The girls too were being strange, and grouping up and being mean.

'_Chance of this kick going the direction I want_.'

Dinah sighed, kicking her basketball around her back lawn. It was a little flat, but there was still a nice, resounding spring to it when her foot made sweet contact.

The ball bounced off of her garage wall and landed directly into her palms.

She bounded the basketball a couple times and shot a few hops. It wasn't fun without doing it with friends, but the girls didn't like basketball all that much anymore. And the boys? They sweated too much.

Then Dinah heard a soft, rustling sound.

She turned around and saw the bushes that were the border between her house and her neighbor's moving. It moved again. And then it stopped.

Dinah bounced her ball.

Rustle, rustle.

Curious, she asked, '_Chance of whatever that is hurting me?_'

Too late, Dinah had walked too close and pushed one of the branches the wrong way. It twisted for half of a second, before swerving around and slapping against her wrist.

"Ow," She muttered with a frown. Though, she saw something interesting.

A tiny, curled up white... thing laid there, panting tiredly, as if it had not long to live. It also had the most precious, pearly round eyes ever. The... thing blinked up at her and mewed silently.

"Hello... who are you?" Dinah wondered. She reached over to touch it, this curled up snake/worm/eel/giant larva the size of a dire wolf puppy/thing with one talon and a pretty, gleaming beak.

It curled up tighter.

Dinah's eyes widened. There was a cut on the poor thing's belly, and red blood was leaking from it. She had not seen that until it had curled up tighter and shone its under belly. "Come on, don't be shy. I won't hurt you..." Dinah muttered softly, cooing at the poor thing as something in her made her heart tender and her eyes fuzzy.

It mewed again, and reached up hesitantly with its shaking talon. Oh, it's hurt _and_ weak! Oh no!

Immediately, Dinah swooped down to gather it into her arms and cradled it like a baby. "I'm going to help you get better, and feed you, and clothe you, and pet you, and play with you, and call you... Donald. Aren't you just a cutie, Donald?"

Donald the Larva squirmed hopelessly in Dinah Alcott's arms.

But trouble found Dinah moments later in the form of Mom. "Young Lady, what is that thing?"

"He's not a thing, Mom!" Dinah protested, the first time she's really spoken back against her parents so forcefully since... ever. It even surprised herself that she _could actually do that_. Never mind that she had thought of him as a thing just moments ago, "This is Donald and he's mine!" She held him up, covered in bandages from beak to tail.

Donald wiggled its tiny talon in greetings.

"Honey... I... what..." Mom paused and stared not at Donald, but at Dinah's face for some odd reason. Was there something on her face? A smidgen that she had forgotten to clean up? Or a spot of dirt... wait, that's the same thing. '_Chance of there being visible dirty spot on my face?_'

No.

'_Chance of Mom looking at my hair right now?_' It was a bit messy from her earlier engagement of sports, after all.

Nope.

'_Chance of... oh forget it_.' Dinah pouted. "Mom, why're you staring?"

Mom blinked, as if caught with her hand in a cookie jar! Oh, so that's what that looked like on Mom's face! "Ah, Dinah, I'm just thinking. Adults do that sometimes, and I was just noticing how pretty your smile is."

"Oh." Mom's _weird_. "Anyway, can I keep 'im, Mom?"

"Well..."

"I'll take care of him! And feed him! And clean up after him and everything!" Dinah promised, though her mind was only revolving around imagining all the fun times she'll have with Donald. This will be great! '_Chance of having fun with Donald?_'

_Yes_. That was a _really_ high number.

"Oh, alright," Mom relented finally.

Then Dinah turned her attention back to Donald, and making sure that little sliver of a creature was comfortable in its cocoon of bandages and things. Hey, where did her fruit roll-up go? Wait... "Donald! That was mine!"

Donald's eyes widened as it realized it had done something wrong.

"It's okay! I can't eat all of it or else I can't eat dinner anyway," Dinah sighed. So that's what it felt like to have the puppy-eyes used on her...

* * *

Next morning, Dinah's shriek awakened everyone in the house.

Mom rushed over immediately. "Dinah! What happ... en... ed...?"

"Mom! Donald had puppies!" Dinah shrieked happily. "I'm gonna call this one Dewey, and that one Huey and this little green one Louie. And look, Mom! Donald got better!" Indeed, Donald was probably six meters long now, if not longer, and took up all the room on her bed.


	2. A Pet Tattletale

1.2 A Pet Tattletale

* * *

There have been more than just a few rumors of things that go crawling in the night, but nothing to worry her by any means. They are just tales, or blurry images, of single-taloned creatures that slither and crawl about, eating the rodents of the city. Nothing horrifying, but it did need investigating, according to the boss. There were just too many unknowns for him not to know, but most of all, she was interested as well.

The clues were easy to spot.

Look for the locations where trash was disappearing, streets were literally cleaner, and even lawns were greener and always trimmed. Look for where gang activity were declining, see the difference while walking to streets that seemed to have miraculously gained a higher level of maintenance.

This was easy to look for, even without all the resources at her fingertips. She didn't need her teammates on this one, not that they would want to join on this anyway.

It seemed like a small errand at the time.

Well, until she realized the trail led to the sewers or the storm drains. Ugh. Even if there seemed to be no smell _at all_ due to her quarry's presence, it didn't help that she knew this couldn't be all that sanitary. But of course, being overconfident in her power, she realized she had overstepped as she noticed a large shadow cast over her, only possible by something at least twice her height from the angle of the shadow and the street light above her.

Doing her best to keep her shaking to a minimum, she turned around to see the monstrosity that loomed behind her.

It towered above her at over twelve meters in height and around a meter thick through out its body, making it seem more like a small bus than the strange, alien thing that it was. Its scaled shells-

_-Plate-like, harder than steel and growing denser with each layer to a point of impossible denseness at its core-_

-belie that it can burrow into almost any substance to carve out its nests. So it did nest, then there was more of them? How were they this hard to notice? It made no sense for them to be hidden so well, for so long.

Click.

She blinked and turned her attention back to the creature. Its talon fell like a guillotine beside her, just a centimeter away from her arm, and carved a jagged, meters-deep line into the road.

_It is demanding attention._

At this point, she realized it _didn't_ want to kill her. Good, phew. Nevertheless, she turned her attention to it fully, if nothing but to be courteous to the giant murder machine that was picking up littered trash in the park not five minutes ago.

_Adapts new abilities as it encounters potential threats._

That doesn't sound...

-_Including parahuman powers-_

... like a good thing.

_It has copied your power right after being exposed to it._  
_It is now analyzing you as you are analyzing it._

Oh. Oh shit.

_It wants you to pet it. Right now. Immediately._

She didn't need to be told a second time, after the talon seemed to close around her like a reaping scythe. It pulled her closer to it, and lowered its large, shelled head right beside her.

Hesitantly, she reached up.

Her hand was shaking now, after realizing what sort of destruction such a creature could cause.

Tentatively, she stroked her fingers gently against the scales right next to those behind the larger ones that covered the battering ram-shaped head. Slowly. She sent out a silent prayer, knowing that it won't be heard, that she'll live through the night. It wasn't supposed to be like this!

The talon twitched, and her heart almost jumped out of her chest. But instead, it wrapped around her... _It is hugging her_.

_Behind the neck scales._

_Yes._

_Right there._

There was a humming in the air, as if an extremely violent power generator had just come online. She blinked. No, that wasn't anything artificial, that was this creature purring.

_It has adopted you as its pet human._

... Wait, what.


	3. Monster at the Hospital

1.3 The Monster at the Hospital

* * *

_Ring ring._

"Uhh..." She rubbed the sand out of her eyes and crawled out of her bed with the speed of a sloth. That infernal ringing did not stop. With an angry slap of her hand, she grabbed her alarm clock. It read 4 A.M. Ugh, this wasn't a nightmare, someone was actually calling at this time.

Amy fell off of the edge of her bed and crumpled onto her carpeted floor, where she got out of bed every morning. There was a slight indent in the carpet by now, she noted as she rose to her feet.

_Ring ring_.

"Ugh..." She stood up, blearily wondering if she even wanted to answer the phone. It read an unknown number, but she had seen the root number enough to know that it was someone from Brockton Bay General Hospital. It was one of the offices, from the look of the extension, she reasoned.

_Ring ring_.

Maybe, just maybe today was the day she would just not answer it.

Maybe Amy will take a lie-in and enjoy herself for once.

Maybe...

... Maybe not. Amy sighed at her own self-defeating mindset, the arguments for doing what she must having far outweighed any excuse she had for one day of rest or relaxation. In the end, she can't relax, and she had to pick up the phone. "Hello?"

"Ah, Panacea." It was one of the senior surgeons, who was in charge of this or that ward or something of that sort. Amy could barely remember meeting all of her coworkers since none of them left as nearly a strong impression upon her as her sister. "We have a situation. There's been a... change in circumstances. We will need you to make house calls from now on."

"... What? Why?" Amy found the haze of sleep quickly diminishing as shock took its place.

"Well, it's just that there's been reports of strange things happening in the main building. I know I wouldn't believe it, but some of my proteges even reported seeing a man walking through a wall and disappearing," He sounded almost exasperated at this, but there is an undertone of tiredness that Amy often associated with her own voice.

"You mean there's a ghost in the hospital? Couldn't he be a parahuman?" She asked numbly. Was this doctor for real? Waking her up just three hours after she got to bed for this?

"... The technical term, I believe, is poltergeist," The surgeon replied. Ah, there's the snobbery tone that was more in line with how these department heads ought to sound like. "But the thing is, even if it's a parahuman, it does everything a ghost does. It even leaves behind ectoplasmic goo. So many patients would be very thankful if you were to make house calls from now on."

"I'll see you later," Amy hung up.

She slipped out of her pajamas and pushed away her Vicky hug pillow away, and threw her robes on. Someone was going to get scolded for waking her up at this hour. And she would... she would show them, all of them. Panacea was a hero too! She could solve this mystery.

"Vicky?" She called into the silence. It was worth a shot. Though, it was probably best if she didn't go upstairs. Best not wake anyone else up and all that. Instead, she fumbled for her keys while mumbling, "I'll show 'em..."

The air was brisk and chilly this early in the morning. The sun had yet to rise and the day had yet to start. There were few cars on the road, at this dim hour, and the few that were had their lights on full.

If she wasn't so drained from the previous day... week... month... or however long it was since she last rolled around on her bed for no good reason at all, Amy would have liked to take a jog at this hour.

There was just something calming about the entire atmosphere with this utter lack of people that clicked with her.

And then-

_Rustle rustle_.

Amy jumped in surprise. Something at this hour? She saw one of the bushes at the side of the road shaking violently. "Oh... it's probably a raccoon or something," She murmured. Her hand patted against her chest gently; the sound of whatever it was that was inside the bushes had broken the trance and complete silence of the morning. It shattered that brief illusion of peace, but Amy knew such a thing was inevitable.

Still, after a few seconds, the rustling stopped, and all that filled her ears were the sounds of her sneakers grinding softly against the pebbles and asphalt beneath her.

Then she saw a... white leaf?

Frowning, Amy took a step back and blinked. It was a white leaf, and it was shivering! "Curiouser and curiouser..." She found herself taking more steps until she was beside the bush. There were tiny, marble-like beads on the leaf-

Oh!

Those were eyes!

Army reached over. It had never occurred to her that something so small could mean any harm to her. Besides, it wasn't like she was ever on the front lines; she was just a meager supporter. Her fingertips brushed against the edge of the leaf, and information filed into her mind. That was no tip, that was a beak!

But anything more, she couldn't feel _at all_. "Are you even alive, or are you a creation?" She wondered.

The white leaf-creature stared up at her. It couldn't be any larger than a hound, though it replied with the strangest noise, that sounded almost like a greeting. "Roo!"

"Come here," She reached for it again.

"Roo!" The illusive creature pulled back.

Amy pouted. That thing... it had to be naturally made, somehow. Yet it just _shouldn't be_. How? "How?" She ran after it, desire to understand burning within her. That moment of touch, for a fraction of a second, she saw something-a strange, new type of gland that was made for secreting...

"Yip!" It barked at her after a couple of steps, before turning around as if waiting and watching to see if she was following it. Out of the bushes, it was easier to see that this was no creature that ought to be native to earth. It had a long, thin body like that of a wyrm's, with a torso so very shaped like a dog's, but most of its body was that of the shape of a giant leaf. A single talon protruded from where its collar bone should be and its head seemed to be a part of the huge, leafy design.

"Come back! I want to touch you!" Amy panted out. Ooph. Why was she so out of breath?

"... Doo?" The creature's eyes widened.

Amy's cheeks reddened. "No, not like that! Let me study your body!"

"Dooo!" It ran.

Summoning all of her meager willpower to push on a little further, Amy tried to bring herself up to jog after the curious being. But after not even twenty steps, she found herself panting, nearly tripping over the hem of her robe, and with her hands on her knees in effort to support herself. Sweat rolled down her forehead and into her eyes, though there was only the slightest of stings before she brought her thick, white sleeves up.

Seeing her stopping and out of breath, the little creature actually turned around and slithered closer and closer. It was still out of range, but it circled her, as if sniffling but not willing to get any closer. Oh, she knew it wanted to, with that twitching of its nose and claw; it wanted to poke her just like little children loved to poke things with sticks.

She stilled, any moment now...

And...

There!

Amy jumped. It was bad, and it will definitely leave her with dirty knees on the lower half of her white robe, but it would be worth it! She crashed into the tiny thing, hugging her arms around its little leaf-like torso before throwing her weight to a side so that it would not be the one taking the blunt of the impact.

Oh! So soft, so _warm_... and it felt like its skin was covered in itty, bitty scales, so warm that they felt like human contact, only with millimeter-long fur covering it too. Then Amy frowned. "How come I can't feel anything now?"

"Doo?" The little critter cooed up at her. A red streak appeared on its head. Then another, and they combined to make the shake of the red cross that she wore.

"Aren't you just so interesting?" Amy asked.

To her surprise, it nodded.

"... Can you understand me?"

It nodded again.

"That's neat. What's your name, little guy?"

"Doo!"

"Well, Doctor Doo, would you like to come with me to the hospital? I'm going to solve a mystery!" Amy confided. Really, it was pathetic what she was doing, a voice said at the back of her head. Talking to an animal? Who knows where it's been! It probably has diseases too. Strangely, this voice sounded like...

"... Roo?"

"Oh, never mind. Let's go!"

* * *

"Panacea, oh, thank god you're-" The doctor stopped and stared. "What's that around your neck?"

Amy resisted rolling her eyes. Call her up at this hour, why don't you? Make her deal with irate patients who like to fling their poo at her, why don't you? She replied nonchalantly, "Oh, this is Doctor Doo. He's my assistant."

"That's... good? Why are you back, there's..."

"I'm going to get rid of the ghost. Vi-er, Glory Girl will be here in five minutes to apprehend the villain." Amy claimed calmly.

The good doctor blinked, "R-Really?"

"Yes. And it so happens that we have all our suspects in one room!" Amy declared further, feeling like her little friend hanging around her neck was giving her a confidence boost or something like that. There might have been a few sparkles of blue light, but... what was she thinking about again? Oh, right! She scanned the waiting room, so filled with patients and hospital employees.

They all watched on quietly and expectantly, not a single face turned away. There were even a few teens who pulled out their phones to take this down!

Amy counted off, "After careful assessment of the security tapes, the finger prints, and the clues, including the ectoplasmic projector hidden away in the custodial locker, I have a list! We have our Chief of Security, Mr. Oliver. We have Dr. Hu and Dr. Wen. Nurse Joy too, and finally the on-staff lawyer, Mr. Baelish. If you all noticed the cheesy 60's music blasting away on the intercom, that was just me being chased by the ghost-"

"Poltergeist," one of the patients covered up with a transparently fake cough.

"-_ghost_," Amy ignored the man and continued to say, "The villain was... Mr. Baelish! You used to be a criminal lawyer, but you betrayed your gang after you pulled off a heist of several tens of millions of dollars' worth of Nazi gold and hid this bounty below the hospital. You needed the hospital to close down to get to it without anyone suspecting, but I found your secret documents of your correspondence with your gang!"

"Drat!"

"... Just waiting for the statute to end so that you can melt it all down and sell it, huh? Well, it looks like Nazi gold will be generously donated to the hospital instead," Amy declared with her arms crossed over her chest, full of false confidence.

Everyone else in the waiting room broke out in applause.

And just in time, Glory Girl arrived. "What'd I miss?"

"Sis, take away that villain who's been terrorizing the hospital with his tinker tech!" Amy commanded.

"... You sure you're fine here?"

"_Yes_."

"... Okay then. Up we go!"

Before Mr. Baelish was out of hearing range, Amy heard him whine to Vicky, "And I woulda gotten away with it if it wasn't for that meddling girl and her stupid monster!"

At this, Doctor Doo replied, "Rooby Doo!"

"Ha ha," Amy giggled while petting her new friend. It was strange, but ever since she touched him, she didn't really feel weird around Vicky anymore. Or feel weird thinking about her, or anything, why... what was she thinking about again?

Doo tugged on her sleeve, slipping a heavy bar of gold into her the folds of her robes. "Roo."

"Well, I guess I won't say no to a reward." Amy sighed. "What do you say to lunch? I could go for a milkshake..."


	4. Wax Off

1.4 Wax Off

"...oss? Boss?"

Oh. He had spaced out for a moment there. It wasn't that he didn't care about the strenuous gang activity that could spark a figurative flame at any moment, it was just that he was never much of an attentive student. It showed in his lack of regard for the times when his underlings would drone on and on about this and that miscellaneous matter not directly related to conflict. But let it not be said that Lung never put up a good show.

He didn't blink, only humming slightly and silently, an act he had learned that would have had others believe he was deep in thought... as if he actually cared. He made no effort to stand, only focusing enough to keep the frown set upon his visage.

Yet sometimes he had to ask, not willing to put in the effort to guess at what they were talking about. "What?"

"It's the _shaolong_, they're interfering with the business. They hit Jump Street yesterday, we've barely salvaged the operations there, but with the delay and the goods ruined, we lost-"

"About 40 grand. Yes, I can do the math," Lung growled. It wasn't hard to tell, considering the _kekouying_ which was a major part of the revenue on that block. He paused and scanned the room. Only for the first second did he begin calculating how many men he could grab in quick succession; the rest, he only thought of crushing his opponent and perhaps getting a good fight.

The two who reported to him shifted nervously, having been with the ABB long enough to know his mood.

But it has been a while since he had a good fight, or any challenge at all. Those _shaolong_ have been avoiding him like a plague, a sign of weakness like those other kids who pretended to be capes, yet doing nothing of note. Lung only gave it another moment's worth of thought, imagining in his head how things would go down... fixating on the moment of victory. "Tell everyone, it looks like we're hunting worms tonight." Yet, he added, "Wait."

"... Sir?"

"We're going to be smart about this. Let's use that one thing I never use. What's it called again...? Starts with an 'S'," He muttered, snapping loudly as the word was just on the tip of his tongue.

"... Subtlety?"

"Yes, that." He nodded. "Arrange a deal, make it... not so loud, but let the boys talk about it. These _shaolong_ only attack our operations, then set a trap. Make it legit. I want to make money if it doesn't show."

-

Lung may not have been the brightest in his pose, but he wasn't hunting humans. And he certainly wasn't hunting a bunch of parahumans that were masters of escape. So he thought to himself, what could possibly go wrong?

Those _worms_-he had no reason to sully his name by calling them _shaolong_-only hit his operations where regular thugs were running the show. But more than that, it was always only one or two the size of a normal man. Yes, they might have been stronger than regular thugs, and they might be able to tank a few bullets, but he was _Lung_.

As he came face-to-face with one of the distributing dealers at his apartment on the eighth floor, one of the walls collapsed, just like it should when these giant worms attacked.

Bricks, dust and the white powder of the merchandise flew everywhere.

One shard of rubble pierced the neck of the dealer immediately.

This could be troublesome, Lung thought as he shifted to face the threat. The monster worm that appeared looked nothing like how it was supposed to look in his imagination. He had seen silhouettes of them around street corners before, but never without blur and never clearly. It stood two meters tall and on the point of its tail, with a single, protruding talon from his chest ready like a glaive. Its scales shook dangerously like that of a rattlesnake's tail, and it hissed softly, as if it were threatening everyone in the room.

"Kill it."

His men didn't pause for a moment, and the bullets began to fly.

Yet as his scales began to sheer into existence, so too the monster worm's body seemed to grow.

_Click. Click. Click._

"... Shit," one of the boys cursed softly.

Lung heard. He didn't need to hear it to know it was his turn. As his head bumped against the ceiling, the monster worm charged at him, using their momentum to crash through the windows.

He grabbed it by the neck, thrusting it below him. Just before impacting against the street below, Lung's knees jabbed against the worm's ribs.

The result left spiderweb-like cracks lining the asphalt, but Lung knew it wasn't the end.

It twitched, and then it screeched, in the most heart-shattering way that left his ears bleeding.

"'ill 'ou..." Lung grumbled, a cloak of fire wreathed over him, immolating the air with scent of burned flesh. In the now dormant edge of Lung's mind, he noted absentmindedly that the streets were strangely deserted. This line of thought didn't last for even a second. He charged at the monster, which still matched his height.

"Kreeee!" The monster replied, sounding awfully reminiscent of the old sounds that Godzilla would make. It too began to glow with hot, orange flames.

"... Heh." Lung pounced, his wings spread for him to pause in the air for a second, before he slammed his arms into his opponent.

The monster worm dodged and slashed at Lung, who in turn grabbed the talon and punched it in the face.

Or he punched where he thought the face was.

Whatever-it was hard to tell, because its entire head was covered in one large, white shell. He had thought to crack it open like an Alaskan King Crab, and devour it in a similar manner, but Lung paused to stare down at his fists. They _hurt_ from punching the worm! "Raaah!" He didn't pause, not in the heat of battle.

This time, the talon pierced his chest, wiggling wildly to spill his organs and slice his lungs and heart. Lung found himself smiling. This might have been worth it. He didn't back off-instead, he wrapped his arms around the beast. One hand under, one over, wings around, and Lung swung his knees forward.

It knew he was trying to do something, because it began to struggle.

But Lung didn't let go and arched his spine backwards. His waist rotated as his opponent smashed into the street in the after effect of his rotating vertical suplex. Without giving it a moment's rest, Lung snapped up and held onto it from behind, only to perform another suplex with it against one of the nearby apartment buildings, causing the entire twenty story building to split in half.

They were the size of monsters now, truly akin to the old movies, and yet Lung couldn't help but shiver slightly when the monster he faced stood up and healed as quickly as he did his chest. Then its back scales lit up, followed by white-hot fires that began to spew from its now opened maw.

It was hot... hotter than anything he had felt in a long, long time.

Lung roared in reply and threw himself at the monster again, wanting to push further, and further and-

It dodged again, but not before slapping Lung's feet out from under him in a blur of motion so quick, Lung had almost not seen it. Then it pounced in return, wrapping its tail around Lung's torso in an unbreakably tight hold that... wait, what-

Lung's world turned upside down as he found himself the recipient of a German suplex.

They were three stories tall now, and approaching four. Soon the fight devolves into a brawl, as neither participant cared for injuries, and neither bored with complex maneuvers. Again, Lung wondered, this time more loudly in his head, why all the buildings they have destroyed and all the streets that vanished in their molten fires were only drug dens or abandoned complexes.

He paused, and seeing him so, his opponent did to, as if to give him a moment to catch his breath.

Ha!

His voice came out as a fiery growl now, so violent and destructive, he might as well have been spitting magma. But the message was clear, in his mind. _You are the perfect opponent. We are evenly matched._

Perhaps he was just imagining it, but the other seemed to nod and point at him. _You too_.

Lung finally took a moment to _see_. Their destructive path had wiped at least three blocks of abandoned buildings off of the map and into blackened, smoking glass.

When did he give in so fully that he had not even remembered destroying any of these...?

_No matter how strong I am... you will always match me. Why do you obstruct me?_ Lung's voice shook the earth.

The answer came so quickly, so instinctively, that he had not believed it.

_Because I do good_.

Lung shook his head. "I don't believe you."

A talon landed on his shoulder. But it wasn't an attack, and it didn't lop his head off. It was just a simple gesture that Lung understood. _The let me show you_.

"Teach me then, _Sensei._"

* * *

A week later, a silent Oni Lee watched as Kenta and his new pet, Shao Lung, stood on the pier with one foot/tail, facing the sun. They were not villains any more. No, they were protectors now. Perhaps some goals and some actions still overlapped, but _they do good_.

As the worm and the man began to go through the motions of their morning katas, Oni Lee wondered how long this would last.

Then Shao Lung bopped his talon against Kenta's nose, and Kenta fell into the water.


End file.
